People have been asking about our mission trip and how things went. In the coming weeks you will get the opportunity to hear from those who went on the trip about what it was like and how it affected us. It was a powerful experience for all who went and we all have stories to tell about the trip. There were times of elation and there were times of disappointment. There were times where we realized that we were making a difference. There were times where we wondered whether we were helping at all.
As a group, we were working with each other and with two other church groups and with YouthWorks to do ministry in the community. Some of us worked with a kids club, playing with kids, showing them love that they don’t always experience in their homes, teaching them about Jesus, building relationships. Laurie, for example, had a little girl, Jaz, who would not leave her side each day we were with the kids. Others of us had the opportunity to go and help paint and clean up around some neighborhood houses. On Monday, they finished the second coat on a house that the group had worked on the previous week. Then, on Tuesday and Wednesday they moved on to another house. Unfortunately, rain hit on Wednesday. This kept them from being able to finish the work that they were doing, and the house will be completed next week by another group. The rain also affected the kids club. We were going to have a water day outside and enjoy playing in the water, but instead we had to come up with other plans. Not only that, but instead of the 30 plus kids we’d had the previous two days, only 11 showed up.
So, in the midst of the excitement, in the midst of the ministry that we were all doing, we found ourselves a bit disappointed. We weren’t able to do as much as we’d like. We weren’t able to finish up, and the rain kept kids away from us.
One of the things we’d learned is that there are definite joys in ministry, but there are also struggles and difficulties and at times we find ourselves up against a wall. It is interesting to look at Jesus’ ministry from this perspective. When did he find himself frustrated by the work he was doing? When did he feel overwhelmed? When did it seem like too much? And what did he do when this happened?
I. Difficulties in Ministry
We don’t always like to think about the frustrations that Jesus faced in his time in ministry. He was the Son of God! He had a direct communication with the Father that many of us would dream of. He could do amazing miracles and speak with an authority that we truly cannot understand. And yet he still found himself, at times, butting up against difficulty in ministry. Ministry in Jesus’ day was not easy, and he had an almost impossible task, to help God’s people to see where they’d fallen away and redirect them into right relationship with God; to preach the coming of the Kingdom of God; to prepare his followers for his own death and resurrection.
Now Jesus didn’t have some of the problems that many of us have. Last week we talked about how sometimes God’s followers find themselves reading God and his word wrong and head off in a wrong direction. I talked about how we need to be sure that when we are speaking for God that we are actually speaking God’s word and God’s truth and not our own thoughts. Jesus didn’t need to worry about this. He spoke God’s word and God’s truth each and every day. He was God’s Word. No, for Jesus the problem wasn’t communicating with God. It was communicating with humans.
I mentioned it last week and it is still true. Humans are not always terribly good listeners. God communicates with us, often quite clearly, and we somehow find ourselves getting what he is saying mixed up, confused and backwards. But that isn’t the only problem, either. Sometimes we ask too much of God. Sometimes we set up hurdles that we want God to jump over, tests that we want God to pass. This is what Jesus found himself butting against in today’s scripture.
II. Dancing to the Flute/Mourning to the Dirge
“This generation is like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to others: ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’”
You see, the people of Israel, the people that Jesus was trying to reach, would not be happy with what God was giving them. When God reached out to them one way, they complained that he didn’t do something else. So God did something else and they complained that he didn’t do the first. The people were putting God in a box and telling God how they wanted him to connect with them. And when he didn’t meet them the way they wanted, they dismissed him altogether.
They were saying, “we want to play the tune that you will dance to, we want you to meet us where we are at this moment.” They changed the rules so they didn’t have to listen to the messengers of God and could instead do what they wanted.
Jesus goes on to explain what this is about. You see, John the Baptist spent his life of ministry living the life of a hermit out in the desert. He wore clothes made of camels’ hair, he ate locusts and honey. He protested in the way he lived and what he ate against the self-indulgence of the world around him. And he called for people to repent, to turn from their selfish and sinful ways and turn back to God. He had an important message, one that prepared the world for the message of Jesus. And many were convinced by his message. But many others dismissed him and his message. “Look at that wild man living in the desert. He doesn’t eat or drink, he’s crazy, he’s got demons. We don’t need to pay attention to him because he’s crazy.”
And then there was Jesus and his ministry. He didn’t go off to the desert as radically as John the Baptist did, though he did spend some time in the desert. And he ate food and drank wine. Instead of separating himself from the self-indulgent and sinful, Jesus went to them and ate with them and visited with them and encouraged them to change their ways. And, in the same way as John, many were convinced by Jesus’ message, but others dismissed him, “He’s a glutton, he spends too much time hanging out with sinners, he likes sinners and their sins a bit too much, by spending so much time with tax collectors and prostitutes he is saying that their actions are okay. We don’t need to pay attention to him because he’s a glutton.”
And Jesus points out the absurdity of this reasoning. You can’t have it both ways. Stop with the character assassinations and listen to the message that both Jesus and John the Baptist are spreading.
Do you see that Jesus and John the Baptist had the same message? They both called people to repent and turn from their selfish and sinful ways. And yet they had radically different ways of sharing that message. John stood aside from the world and stood up as an example. He distanced himself from the sins so that people could experience the example that he set. Whereas Jesus entered into the dark and dirty world where people lived and met them where they were so that he could call them out. John called to them from a distance, asking them to repent. John stayed stationary and people came to him to hear his words of truth. Jesus traveled among the people and into their towns, to their dinner tables.
III. Ministry / Rest
After making this point, after venting some of his frustrations about the fickle nature of his people, Jesus then proceeded to call woe down upon the cities and towns he was visiting. We didn’t read these woes. We skipped over them. But they’re there, and they’re real. Jesus was frustrated. He and John had both been working to bring God’s truth to these people, and they were staying self-righteous and keeping with their older understanding of truth. They were allowing their own understanding to preempt God’s messengers and Jesus’ ministry.
Jesus prays about this with his Father. He takes his frustration to the Father in an interesting way. He praises God for those wise people who don’t get it, who have had God’s truth hidden from them. He praises God because though the truth is hidden from the wise, it is revealed to children. He celebrates the message that he has, knowing it is from God the Father, knowing that those who follow him will learn God’s truth. And then, in the midst of this discussion about God’s truth being hidden from the wise and revealed to the children, in the midst of this discussion about how God’s truth is only revealed to those for whom Jesus chooses to reveal it, in the midst of this problem that Jesus has with people not taking the message that he has seriously, Jesus speaks some of his most powerful words of comfort and peace: “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-burdened, and I will give you rest. I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
Knowing how ministry sometimes is, I understand this need. I wonder if Jesus himself was reminding himself that God would bring him rest for his soul and then he felt the need to share that rest with his followers. “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,” Jesus says. “This ministry thing, that is so difficult, that can be so complex and hard, that can at times be so frightening and frustrating, take that yoke upon you.”
On the mission trip we realized the need for rest. We were exhausted each day with not enough time to relax or recoup. And yet, as we served, even as we found ourselves frustrated, we realized that Jesus’ yoke is easy and his burden is light. For there is joy in serving God. There is peace in doing his work. There is power in being intentional about seeking God’s will. I encourage you to talk with those who were on the mission trip. Hear their stories, find inspiration in their journeys, and find ways to take Jesus’ yoke in your own life. You may find it frustrating at times, you may find it difficult. But Jesus does promise that he will give rest and there will be joy and peace. Amen.
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